Sinkholes on the rise in Lake, experts warn

That's how it started. Just one little crack on the corner of the house in the concrete block.

Larry King, who owns a property-appraisal business in Leesburg, noticed the first crack in his 30-year-old home about two years ago.

Then more came. And more. They grew, fed apparently by the something wiggly happening underground.

Now cracks in King's home south of Leesburg near U.S. Highway 27 gape a half-inch and have gone the whole way through the concrete block, tearing drywall and leaving ajar doors and the spots where walls meet ceilings.

King, 76, is not alone, and chances are pretty high that a rising number of homeowners, especially in and near The Villages retirement community, will be in the same situation when summer rains start.

What's going on under that shifty Florida soil? Answer: sinkholes. Big cracks in homes now are often diagnosed as nascent sinkholes, thanks to ground-penetrating radar and other new technology.

That's what happened at King's house. There aren't any actual depressions in the ground where the earth has collapsed on itself, the traditional mental picture of a sinkhole.

Rather, the symptoms are cracks, doors that don't want to open and shut properly and nails that pop out of wood floors, said Jim Flynn of LRE Ground Services, a Brooksville company that fixes sinkholes across Central Florida and in Lake County.

And the sinkhole season is about to commence.

Rainfall oozing through the soil picks up acid, which slowly dissolves the limestone underneath most of the state. As the limestone dissipates, pores and cracks are enlarged, and holes form in the rock.

Take away the water because of a drought or pumping from development and agricultural use nearby, and the rock collapses on itself. Throw in heavy rains after a drought, and you've got the recipe for the most active sinkhole time: The pressure sends the surface tumbling into the earth.

Isn't Florida a fun place to live? Don't forget that geological experts also say the state is simply shifting underground because of the amount of development on top.

And now, the companies that repair sinkholes are seeing an increase in complaints in Lake.

"The Tampa Bay area is the worst, but after that the sinkholes in Marion and Lake have definitely got everyone's attention," Flynn said. "It's not just our own experience — the engineers we work with on projects have echoed the sentiment about the increase in activity."

But are sinkholes increasing? Or is that more houses are being built over areas prone to them, such as The Villages? Anthony Randazzo, president of Geohazards Inc. in Gainesville, leaned toward the latter.

"We've known about sinkholes at The Villages for many, many years. We've done numerous investigations, and they're a lot more common than people are led to believe by real-estate agents and developers," said Randazzo, professor emeritus in geology at the University of Florida.

Oh, dear. If a sinkhole decides to visit your property, count on a headache — even if you have sinkhole insurance.

Over the past year, King said, a Land O' Lakes company doing his repair had to tear up his landscaping and pull his back porch off to get close to the house.

Nineteen truckloads of cement were pumped through a high-pressure hose fitted with a drill bit under his home in an attempt to stabilize the ground underneath. The machine blew the cement into depths of 20 to 65 feet so far, and the company has yet to come back and inject more cement closer to the surface.

Cost? At the most recent count, King's insurance has paid $32,000 to repair the interior of the house. He has banked the bucks and is waiting for the sinkhole company to finish its work. About $50,000 has gone to the company for the underground work, for a total of $82,000.

And the result? King said the movement under his house appears to have stopped, but the value of his home has plummeted. He estimated the structure alone, which features a dramatic stone fireplace in a sunken living room, was worth $140,000 to $150,000 before the shifting started. And now, he said it's worth about half — between $70,000 and $80,000.

"That's not because of the damage," King said. "It's just the stigma of having a sinkhole."

The only upside is that sinkholes, like hurricanes, can't effectively be prevented. It's best to do the same thing under either condition: fortify oneself with a beverage of choice, sit back and sip.

Lritchie@tribune.com. Lauren invites you to send her a friend request on Facebook at facebook.com/laurenonlake.